When I was very young and armed with crayons and blank manila paper, I would sit at my kindergarten table and repeatedly draw the house I was growing up in. The house was always in the center of the page with blue skies above and green grass below, or buried in snow, sometimes with birds flying over, occasionally riding my bicycle, with the family car parked in front, and, of course, a blazing circle of a sun with rays extending out. Perhaps these drawings demonstrated the appreciation I had for family, routine and security, combined with living in an imaginary landscape of my own design.

Over the years I learned more about shelter by living in unique spaces: I learned that walls are an important of part of life after living in a massive empty loft; I learned that a former general store made for the best parties in art school (as well as great studio), and I learned that living in a Calagari-like attic would influence my work in portrait photography.

On the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (where I now have an old General Store for a studio / living space) I have often been awed by the many houses that once served as “corporate provided locations” for the miners and their families. Documenting these many facades over the years, I learned how the culture of mining and the miner’s family life became embedded in the Keweenaw. Like these various facades that are assembled together, the “location houses" now serve as small monuments to the past, and to the present, and they are as unique and individual as the Keweenaw Peninsula itself.